Do you guys remember songwriting duos? I’m sure Timberland and Timberlake rings a bell and of course Paul McCartney and John Lennon are probably the best known duo but what about Isaac Haynes and David Porter or if I dig even deeper into my childhood memories, the Sherman Brothers who brought us ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. The pieces that came out of those duos are just so memorable. There’s something so powerful in the sound that you get from two souls who truly understand each other musically. Well known duos like that are unfortunately becoming more rare because people aren’t as faithful as they used to but thankfully on our sacred Montreal island we have sibling duo that definitely qualify for the books: Skinny Bros.
The Skinny Bros, Christopher Cargnello and Paul Cargnello, have been making music together since they were 3 and 6, respectively, so they’ve clearly had the time to create a strong bond and dynamic but I think it’s more their time apart that has contributed to their exclusive sound. Their respective musical backgrounds, Paul coming from more of the Punk-Rock scene and Chris a Master in Jazz Performance has created a great balance between structure and disarray in their music which they’ve self-described as Grit and Grace. Though they’ve been making music together for years they only dropped their debut album together, entitled Fat Tunes, last may. After one listen I was totally sold but I wondered what direction these amazing multi-instrumentalists where heading with this project. This week they released another fold to their vision, which has secured itself a spot in my best of 2013: Skinny Bros X Jonathan Emile, a 4-piece EP.
Jonathan Emile has been one of my favorite artists for some time now but it’s not just his presence that had me sold on this EP but rather the cohesiveness they were able to create. Too often a rapper gets put on a track just so there can be a vocalist on the piece but it’s unbelievably obvious that they were barely involved in creative process and have no understanding of the essence of the music. On this EP it’s quite the contrary, you can feel the fun they had making this together and the trust they have in each other. That trust is essential for us listeners because it leads to artists taking bigger artistic risks and creating epic pieces like ‘When it snows’.
The EP is a free download and yes you’ll be crazy thirsty for more when it’s done but hopefully with enough downloads they’ll understand that we want a full album ASAP. Personally, I’d also love to see the Skinny Bros continue this series of EP releases with a panoramic of other great artists in this world.
1 Comment
word…